1929 Ford Roadster - 249MPH On Dirt!

1/8The BMR roadster is based on a '29 Ford body by Polyform and uses a '32 grille shell. The car weighs 3,800 pounds, which is considered light for a land speed car. Note the unique front suspension, a four-bar setup that leads with the axle and has transverse torsion bars and friction shocks behind the grille. The P&S Funny Car steering box controls a steering angle that's just a few degrees.

This story is about the ultimate execution of hot rodding's earliest directive: Take a roadster and make it go fast. It was as simple as that as long ago as 1927, which is the earliest date we've heard anyone claim for the first racing on the dry lakes of Southern California. Ed Iskenderian will tell you that he was personally there as early as 1932, and there were racing clubs that existed before the Southern California Timing Association was founded in November 1937, followed by a few other sanctioning bodies. But it's the SCTA that survives, and its Roadster class is the one with the strongest links to that most primal need.

Today, Roadster class competition exists at El Mirage Dry Lake and at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and while the briny version gets all the glory, El Mirage carries a longer hot rodding history. It's the last of the dry lakes where competition still occurs (with Muroc, Rosamond, and Harper having been forgotten by hot rodders), and El Mirage is almost literally where HOT ROD magazine got its start.

Success on El Mirage's 1.3 miles of talcum dust is also significantly more elusive than it is at Bonneville's 5 miles of comparatively tractive salt. The men of BMR Racing know this well.

BMR is Berg, McAlister, and Robinson. That's sponsor Don Berg Sr., the late proprietor of Berg Hardware in Pasadena, California, since 1923; Alan McAlister, local hot rodder; and Doug Robinson, longtime proprietor of Horsepower Engineering. Alan and Doug are partners in the well-known BMR '32 coupe that has been featured in HRM and was at one time driven by HRM staffer Will Handzel. The old coupe set many records on the dirt and at the Salt, but it has now been torn down for a redo while this Roadster class car is in action.

The new car was a 10-year project, and while Alan is the owner of record on the like-painted coupe, this one is Doug's--not only in ownership but also in concept, start to finish. It was his goal to handle every facet of the car on his own, though that fell down a bit at the end as he enlisted help. Doug is a major-league thinker, and after noodling with the full-scale car for a while, he finally went to the extreme of building his own scale wind tunnel at the shop so he could test some of his aero theories with a model of the car. That kind of determination and planning shows in every detail of this car.

2/8The flip-up body reveals how Doug built a secondary firewall system behind the 'wall on the fiberglass body. Everything is clean and neat.

It also shows in the result. In October 2008, with old shoe Alan "Fogie" Fogliadini manning the throttle, the BMR entry made a glory pass at 249.129 mph at El Mirage in the C/Fuel Roadster class, making it the single fastest roadster ever at El Mirage. There are faster Modified Roadsters--a class that allows extreme wheelbase extension and more aero mods--but this one is 5.8-plus-mph faster than the AA/Blown Fuel car of the Scott, Smith, Leggitt team that was the fastest at the lakes for 11 years. In land speed racing, 5 mph is a big margin. In the cutthroat Roadster class, it's light years.

If anyone bests this number again any time soon, we can guess who it will be. Their initials are BMR.

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This is the model of the roadster used for aerodynamic development inside Doug Robinson's homebuilt wind tunnel. We have a few suspicions about some of the lessons learned, but LSR racers keep mum on aero like engine builders do about cams.

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The roadster rides on a 133-inch wheelbase. Behind the spun aluminum discs are Center Line 15-inch, spindle-mount front wheels and 18-inch Eric Vaughn custom wheels in the rear. The tires are Goodyears up front (21 inches tall); on the rear, Dunlop 5.5x6.0-18s are used at El Mirage, and Mickey Thompson 30-inch LSR tires are used at Bonneville. The rear axle is a Winters quick-change with a 2.3:1 ring-and-pinion and a 2.0:1 final drive.

This is Fogie's world at 249 mph. On both sides you can see the dense, SFI-approved padding that supports his head from side to side. The butterfly wheel includes the buttons for the air shifters on the Owens trans, which is a clutchless planetary setup that defaults to high gear if the air shifter fouls.

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Jerry Darien is a former driver of the BMR coupe. He's with Darien and Meadows, the A/Fuel team that operates the car for the Force girls. Jerry helped out with the parts for the nitro-burning, 370ci (4.375x3.08), Keith Black Hemi with Brad Anderson heads, a Hogan intake, twin MSD mags, and Aviad oiling. Tuning the throttle control on the Pete Jackson injection for LSR rather than the drags has been a challenge. The rail-type engine-mount system is set so the car can run a Hemi, Chevys, or a 302ci Jimmy six.

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This is the old BMR '32 five-window that the team has run since the early '80s. It's now undergoing a racing restoration and will be run again with blown Ardun power.